Muslim leader speaks out after more than 80 days in ICE detention: ‘It brought back memories from Palestine’

The president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque said he was subjected to “dehumanizing” treatment during more than 80 days in federal immigration custody – treatment that reminded him of the time he spent in Israeli military prisons in occupied Palestine nearly four decades ago.

“It all brought back old memories of things that happened to me when I was tried in Palestine,” said Salah Sarsour in his first interview since being released last month. “The humiliation, the treatment by guards, the way they talk to people, the way they try to put people down.” He said he lost more than 30lb while in immigration detention.

Sarsour, who was born in the West Bank and has been a US permanent resident for nearly three decades, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March and released after a federal judge found he had probably been detained in retaliation of his advocacy for Palestinian rights – a likelihood the judge said would render his detention unlawful. The Trump administration is continuing to seek his deportation and Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, personally signed off on a memo last year describing Sarsour as deportable, because “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world”.

Sarsour believes his detention was a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate people out of denouncing Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“They thought that by arresting me they would scare people fighting for justice for Palestinians, but it’s the opposite,” he said.

Sarsour, 53, is the owner of several businesses, the father of six US citizens and grandfather of nine – with a tenth grandchild on the way. He is also a prominent community leader in Milwaukee, where he has lived since moving to the US in 1993 with his wife to build a family in a place where he could “live freely”, he said.

On 30 March, he was on his way to see his elderly mother when he was surrounded, he said, by at least 10 unmarked vehicles and armed agents in civilian clothing and whisked away, first to a detention center near Chicago and later miles away at a facility in Indiana.

His detention drew condemnation from scores of civil rights groups, community members and legislators as well as protests outside the detention center.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment but has claimed that Sarsour was “suspected of funding terror organizations and lying on immigration forms”. He has denied both claims.

In a statement issued shortly after his arrest, DHS cited Sarsour’s decades-old criminal convictions in Israel for, it said, “throwing a Molotov cocktail at the homes of Israeli armed forces and illegally attempting to possess weapons and ammunition”.

Sarsour says those accusations stem from an arrest as a teenager by Israeli soldiers in 1989, during the first intifada. He also says he was forced, under torture and threat of rape, to sign documents in Hebrew without understanding them. He ultimately spent two years in an Israeli prison. Sarsour was again detained by Israeli authorities for nearly three months when he last visited Palestine in 1995.

A spokesperson for the Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to his involvement with several local organizations, Sarsour is a board member of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a national advocacy group that Trump administration officials have accused of countering US foreign policy interests.

Sarsour is due in court in Chicago on Wednesday for the first substantive hearing in his immigration case, while a case considering the legality of his detention moves through the federal court system. His attorneys have argued the government has fast-tracked his immigration case, effectively targeting him to make a political point. “They use the immigration court as a tool for their immigration enforcement policies,” said Samuel Cole, a former immigration judge and senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which is representing Sarsour.

Cole added that Sarsour’s case echoes those of Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, and others who were detained over their pro-Palestinian activism, but is particularly alarming considering he has legally lived in the US for decades and that the government has known about his record in Israel for years. According to documents filed with the court, the US government evaluated Sarsour’s arrests in Israel several times since 2000, while determining his eligibility for naturalization.

When Sarsour, who has no criminal record in the US, was first detained, he thought the agents had mistaken him for someone else. When they tried to get him to sign paperwork agreeing to being deported, he refused.

“I was very confused”, he said. Only as his ordeal protracted into days did he realize he had been targeted for his activism. “That really shocked me to be honest,” he said.

Sarsour, who is diabetic, said he was denied the daily blood sugar level checks he needed, and the food served to detainees was so bad “you don’t know what you’re eating sometimes”. He slept on a 2-in mattress and with a thin blanket in a freezing room he shared with dozens of other men. When he asked to congregate with other Muslim men for Friday prayers, as well as to celebrate Eid, he was told he couldn’t.

A month after his release, Sarsour said he is haunted by his time in detention and doesn’t feel like the same person. He knows he faces a lengthy court battle. But he said he has nothing to hide.

“We have a mission: let’s continue to make our voice clear, to protect the first amendment, to support justice,” he said. “I’ll continue with that message whether I’m inside or outside.”